XMET—An Unattended Meteorological Sensing System for Austere Environments

Accurate surface meteorological (MET) observations reported reliably and in near–real time remain a critical component of on-scene environmental observation systems. Presented is a system developed by Scripps Institution of Oceanography that allows for rapid, global deployment of ground-based weather observations to support both timely decision-making and collection of high-quality weather time series for science or military applications in austere environments. Named the Expeditionary Meteorological (XMET), these weather stations have been deployed in extreme conditions devoid of infrastructure ranging from tropical, polar, maritime, and desert environments where near continuous observations were reported. To date, over 1 million weather observations have been collected during 225 deployments around the world with a data report success rate of 99.5%. XMET had its genesis during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), when the U.S. Marine Corps 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing identified an immediate capability gap in environmental monitoring of their operation area due to high spatiotemporal variability of dust storms in the region. To address the sensing gap, XMET was developed to be a portable, expendable, ruggedized, self-contained, bidirectional, weather observation station that can be quickly deployed anywhere in the world to autonomously sample and report aviation weather observations. This paper provides an overview of the XMETs design, reliability in different environments, and examples of unique meteorological events that highlight both the unit’s reliability and ability to provide quality time series. The overview shows expeditionary MET sensing systems, such as the XMET, are able to provide long-term continuous observational records in remote and austere locations essential for regional spatiotemporal MET characterization.